An analysis of Facebook groups shows soaring support for Boris, active dislike for Livingstone and a complete lack of interest in Paddick.
An official Boris Johnson politician page which comes with campaign videos, favourite books etc was launched a week ago and already has over 1,500 members. A more long-standing politician page has almost 2,500. One of the many unofficial Boris profiles has 1,000 friends. Two groups both named Boris Johnson for Mayor of London have 4,500 members between them. And largest of them all, the Boris Johnson Appreciation Society group has 13,600 members. There are a few hundred other groups about him, with only a very small being negative about him. Apart from the groups etc, there is a BackBoris application that almost 3,000 people have featured on their personal profiles.
In stark contrast to Boris' immensely popular appreciation group, one Ken Livingstone Appreciation Society has just 100 members and the other more quirky one has just 400! There are at least ten groups set up against Livingstone for every positive one, and if you look at their titles people evidently don't merely dislike him, they despise him. The only group in favour of Livingstone with any support at all is one set up by NUS activists, but it still only has 1,700 members. His campaign team set up an official politician page before Boris' yet it is six and a half times smaller than the two Boris Johnson politician pages.
Whilst there at least 250 groups relating to Boris and Livingstone each, there are just five about Paddick - two in favour, three against. He doesn't fare much better than Livingstone in terms of active support, having a politician profile that has attracted 1,500 supporters in five months, a group with 800 members and a profile with almost 400 friends.
Overall, there are over 25,000 members/friends of pro-Boris groups. That's roughly ten times more those supportive of Livingstone (whose active detractors massively outnumber his active supporters) and almost nine times more than Paddick.
If Boris was twice as popular as the others on Facebook the difference could be attributed to various factors and it wouldn't be too interesting. But, as with our analysis of BBC employees on Facebook (eleven BBC employees self declare as liberals to every one conservatives), the scale of the differential is too large to not be very significant. He clearly has a broad appeal, there are 2.5 liberals to every conservative in UK Facebook network. His popularity with younger people is unparalleled. Let's hope that this strength of self-declared support shown on Facebook translates into votes.
Facebook is not necessarily representative of public opinion in general - otherwise Ron Paul would have won the Republican nomination.
Posted by: Ben Stevenson | March 27, 2008 at 11:28
Ben you're thinking of MySpace. And Ron Paul's campaign was explicitly structured around the internet so his result was always going to be disproportionate.
Posted by: Tim Roll-Pickering | March 27, 2008 at 12:16
London Mayor stuff - Greens are targeting Paddick:
http://orangebyname.blogspot.com/2008/03/exclusive-just-about-greens-urge-lib.html
Posted by: HERD | March 27, 2008 at 12:19
All very well, but how many of the Facebook clicky-click people are going to actually get up, get out, and vote? A fraction, I'd imagine.
Posted by: Steve R | March 27, 2008 at 13:03
Facebook is for sad people without real friends.
Posted by: Not Boris | March 27, 2008 at 20:02
"And we know he is hazy about the financing for his much-trumpeted bus policies. "What's the cost going to be?" asked Andrew Neil, referring to the candidate's mooted revival of the Routemaster and conductors. "Well, that depends on the development cost and various other factors that, of course, we will bear in mind." "So we don't know," interjected Neil. "We don't know," Johnson said. He is going to need a lot of help if he ever gets to City Hall."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/26/2
Posted by: Bumbling Boris | March 28, 2008 at 01:06
Heh Heh just wait now while ZaNuLab demands every member in the UK and associated trot groups in China, Cuba and other marxist paradises sign up to Ken for God...
Posted by: bexie | March 28, 2008 at 10:10
Bumbling Boris | March 28, 2008 at 01:06
Anyone who knows about project management would know that the initiation stage looks at feasibility and costs. It is unlikely that you would have anything more than a remote idea of costs at the stage of initial proposal.
In other words you need to spend some seed money to identify the costs, benefits and environmental/ economic impact of any project.
Bear in mind that I have worked in major projects at TfL and do have some idea of the process.
Posted by: bexie | March 28, 2008 at 10:13
I'm pestering all my facebook and real friends to remember to register... it's hard to get people glued to facebook to get off their backsides to go and vote, but I think the thought of having Ken in for another 4 years will break the inertia!
Go Boris!
ps. please visit http://www.LondonLX.com
Posted by: LondonLX | March 28, 2008 at 16:12
You can always remind your computer-bound friends to register for a postal vote.
Posted by: Monkey | March 28, 2008 at 17:42
Can we not call Lefties "Liberals" please?
I see no reason why we need to import this misleading vocabulary from the US.
Lefties are NOT Liberal in any sense of the word.
Conservatives are the true Liberals, believing, as they do, in individual freedom.
Posted by: Graham Checker | March 28, 2008 at 20:39